Hippie Stomper 01/12/2024 Photo Album

I opened my dry fly tying season with a hippie stomper, and why not? This fly is hands down my top producing dry fly, and I cannot even tell you what it imitates. I suppose that is the beauty of it; it looks like any number of natural food items, and most importantly it is simply buggy. I suggest that you read my last post from 01/11/203, as it has excellent background information and a link to an older post with even more explanation. My 2023 post is especially effective at explaining how and when I deploy the hippie stomper.

I began last year with twenty-five hippie stompers in stock containing my favorite body color, peacock; and I determined that my supply was severely diminished. In fact, toward the end of the 2023 season I began to worry that my valued stock of hippie stompers would be fully depleted. This level of shrinkage is a testament to heavy usage of an extremely effective fly. For this reason I approached my vise and tied twenty-eight new versions. I made three for my friend, Nate, and the remainder replenished my fly boxes. Of the twenty-five for me, twenty contained a peacock dubbed body and five contained an olive ice dub body. I was able to recover quite a few hooks by stripping old hippie stompers that were damaged through a season of heavy usage.